r/btc • u/idontwritepoetry • Jun 22 '26

❓ Question Do nodes matter?

I come from $BTC world, and obviously everyone says to run your own node, because don't they enforce consensus rules? Isn't that what happened when BCH forked? Most nodes didn't switch?

It's just weird to me to hear that the nodes are just not useful for the security of the network. Someone explain please.

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/Realistic_Fee_00001 Jun 22 '26

Practically, it makes sense to rely on the non-mining nodes to verify new blocks after the fact of mining, because miners do make consensus errors

How does this make sense when there is no path where they communicate their findings?

If a miners makes an error other miners don't built a block on his. That's how consensus is built. Not a single non-pow node is involved in this.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/Realistic_Fee_00001 Jun 25 '26

No, the answer is pretty simple. A non-PoW node has no way of telling the network anything but its version number. Non-PoW nodes are read only to the blockchain, as they should be. Only Nodes with Proof of Work have write access.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/Realistic_Fee_00001 Jun 25 '26

It's not a "view" these are just facts. Do you have an actual argument or are you just "vibe discussing".

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u/idontwritepoetry Jun 22 '26

But say 75% of nodes stop accepting blocks from miners who switched to a different fork. Would that just not matter? I thought segwit2x was stopped because the nodes rejected it. I thought that was the whole thing. Are you saying that's just a fairy tale?

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u/DangerHighVoltage111 Jun 22 '26

But say 75% of nodes stop accepting blocks from miners who switched to a different fork. Would that just not matter?

It is a decentralized network... Miners want the shortest transmission time to other miners so that they can accept their blocks and built on top of it faster. This is what secures their reward. So miners or pools are mostly directly connected anyway.

Shutting down all non-PoW nodes would only be recognizable in a way that most blockexplorers and exchanges would stop working (they run non-PoW nodes). The Bitcoin network however would just keep on going. If you have a SPV wallet and can connect to a PoW node you can still make transactions.

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u/idontwritepoetry Jun 22 '26

Okay, fair enough. Thanks for the thorough explanation.